“I won’t stay here when Nick leaves!” I exclaimed. “I’m going to call CPS and ask them to reassign me!”
Gary laughed—an ugly sound that made my stomach tighten further.
“Where are you gonna go, sweetie? How many people are willing to take in a foster kid in their late teens? In this town, Nancy and I are pretty much the only ones.”
“Because you use us as slave labor,” I snapped. “Come on, Nick—I don’t want to stay here and listen to one more word of this!”
I tugged him towards the door because it looked like he was about to explode with rage.
“If you touch her—if you touch one hair on her head—I’ll kill you. I fucking mean it. I don’t care where I am, I’ll come back and hunt you down,” he growled at Gary.
For a moment, our foster father went pale. Then his face hardened and he snapped,
“You just try it, boy. I’ll get out my shotgun and then we’ll see who’s hunting who! Once you’re eighteen, you’re off my property and if you come back, it’s trespassing. I can shoot you and the police will back me up all the way!”
They glared at each other for another full minute before I was able to tug Nick away, through the basement door and out to the barn.
As we got dressed for bed, I knew that I still had my “big brother” by my side, but my feeling of relative peace and safety was shattered. Gary Spaulding was right—what was I going to do once Nick turned eighteen and the Spauldings kicked him out? For that matter, what was Nick going to do? Where would he live while he finished high school?
In a few short weeks, both of us were going to be in trouble and I didn’t see any way out of it.
As I slipped into the sleeping bag with Nick, wearing my long, ragged nightshirt and cotton panties, I was still mulling over the situation.
“Nick?” I murmured, looking up at him. “What are we going to do?”
“I told you—I have a plan,” he said. But I didn’t think he looked very happy or confident. “It’s a good plan—I just have to speed it up some,” he added, as though sensing my worry.
“Couldn’t you tell me about it?” I begged but he shook his head.
“You’ll find out soon enough, I promise.”
Then he looked down at me and seemed to see the fear in my eyes.
“Aw, come on, darlin’,” he murmured, cupping my cheek. “You know I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“And you’ll stay with me? Forever?” I pleaded softly.
“Forever.”
He ducked down to kiss my cheek but I turned my head and somehow our lips met.
Electricity raced through my veins. I put my arms around his neck and deepened the kiss, parting my lips and asking for more. This was what I wanted—what I had been wanting for years. On my forearm, the blood-sib brand burned as though in warning but I didn’t care—I only wanted more.
Nick seemed to want the same—at least at first. We were face to face, pressed together in the confines of the sleeping bag and I could feel that the kiss was affecting him too. The hard length of his shaft was branding my belly through his thin sleep bottoms and my ragged nightshirt and his lips parted too, taking me up on my invitation. A moment later I tasted his tongue for the first time. I moaned low in my throat and sucked it eagerly, inviting him inside.
But after about a minute of the most intense kissing of my life—well, if I’m honest, the only kissing in my life, since I had never kissed anyone before that moment—Nick pulled away abruptly.
“Why…why did you stop?” I asked breathlessly.
“Because—we can’t do this,” Nick exclaimed.
“Why not? Don’t you want to? I do,” I admitted softly. “I’ve been wanting to kiss you—to let you kiss me—for a long time now, Nick,” I added, recklessly admitting my crush in one fell swoop.
“Kira, darlin’, you’re beautiful,” he murmured softly, stroking my cheek. “But you’re also my little sister.”
“Says who?” I demanded. “Some pack of people or…or things we don’t even know anymore?”
“Our fathers became blood-brothers—that makes us family,” he reminded me.
“Our fathers are dead,” I said bluntly. “All they left us are these brands on our arms. And while I’m grateful they brought us back together and they let us know if the other one is in trouble, I don’t think they’re enough to keep us apart.”
“I do, though,” Nick protested. “You weren’t raised in the pack like I was, Kira—you don’t understand the Unbreakable Laws. We can’t be together that way—we just can’t.”
He was panting and I could feel how aroused he still was, but he was shaking his head.
I bit my lip, looking up at him.
“Never?” I whispered. “We can never be together?”